Easy to lose track of time though when you're at the vibrant,
outdoor Greene Street Market. Vendors selling everything from fresh vegetables
to hand-crafted jewelry. Live acoustic music. And milling about amid fellow customers
– a mix of stroller-pushing parents, tattooed bohemians and just plain folks –
you're quite likely to run into several people you're quite glad to see.

So, yes, waiting 1,260 seconds for our order at Earth and Stone
Wood Fired Pizza, which is tucked away in a South corner of Greene Street
Market (held in the Church of Nativity, 304 Eustis Ave., parking lot Thursdays
from 4 – 8 p.m.), was a snap.

Earth and Stone cooks their pizzas in a mobile brick oven
that sits atop a trailer towed in from Albertville with a Chevrolet Suburban. Available
toppings include the out-there (roasted asparagus, corn and sweet potatoes) and
the been-there (pepperoni, Italian sausage, etc.).

They take your order at a portable table underneath a white
canopy. A blackboard displays tonight's menu. A coffin-sized cooler holds the
ingredients and proofed dough is kept in plastic containers, cardboard to-go
boxes are stacked and ready to go, and a five-person crew keeps the pizzas
flowing. They told us they'd already sold about 100 of their eight- to
nine-inch personal-sized pies by the time we ordered at 6:30 p.m.

I went with The Greene Street ($12), which features
mushrooms, red onions, baby spinach, Kalamata olives, roasted peppers and mozzarella.
Be prepared for your pies to be less than perfectly-shaped circles (and sometimes
closer to a rhombus or triangle), but taste-wise the crusts, made from
hand-stretched Caputo flour dough, were a highlight: super-fresh and cooked to
a pleasing chewiness, without being dried-out and crumbly. The red sauce was
tangy without stepping on the flavors of the Greene Streets yummy toppings,
which were of high-quality.

And they better be for a $12 personal pizza.

We also ordered The Nanny ($12). And we were shocked by how
seamlessly and tastefully the asparagus and corn fit into the more-common
toppings – roasted peppers, red sauce and mozzarella. The Humble Heart Farms
goat cheese really set the pie apart though. A little sweeter, a little less
oily than the mozz, it made me wonder why pizza makers don't use goat cheese
more often.

The Latham ($12) was the most unusual pie we went with. And this
was another case of an Earth and Stone offering that proved to be a winning
dish and not a wacky, Guy Fieri-TV show spectacle. The sweet potato was sliced
ultra thin, which helped. Goat cheese and white sauce gave The Latham a cool, comfort-food
like texture, while the caramelized onion left each bite with a nifty sweet finish on
your palate.

The Popeye ($10) comes topped with baby spinach, roasted
peppers, white sauce and mozzarella. Those ingredients might be a little less
flashy than our other orders, but they were in excellent harmony with that
delicious Earth and Stone crust.

There's not really seating at the Greene Street Market. But
personal pizzas are pretty manageable standing up, and downtown there are
benches and courthouse steps within a quick walk if you want to park it. On Tuesdays from 3 – 7 p.m., Earth
and Stone sets up at the farmers' market at Latham United Methodist Church (109
Weatherly Road S.E.).

OK, there were some facets of our Earth and Stone meal that
could stand improvement. The crusts were a tad bubbly. The Popeye and Latham weren't
exactly loaded down with toppings, and the $12 price point on the more
expensive pies teeters on being too high.

Still, the original topping combinations and standout crust –
not to mention the eclectic, al fresco atmosphere – made for a memorable dinner
and wonderful conversation. And you can do much worse than that, can't you?